Megadramon

Playing a lot of Element TD games lately, I’ve come to realize the importance of the problem with standard mode, especially now with save banks. The problem lies in the fact that this game records stats based on illegitimacy, and that the way people play in multiplayer standard mode is not legitimate. It's always been a rule that if you want to compete in a forum competition, you'd have to do it in single player. Because when in single player, you are alone; no one can help you, and no one can screw you over. Single player is the ideal environment for legitimate games. Now that save banks are in effect, it should record stats based on legitimacy, but it doesn't. Currently in multiplayer standard mode, your opponents play a big factor on how well you can do on the final fruit stage. If you're playing with a bunch of leakers or slow people, you reap the rewards. If you play with people as speedy as yourself, you gain very little income. Unless you're the one controlling the creep spawns, no game is ever the same. Your result on the fruit level fluctuates every game because your opponents play a major role on how well you do. This isn't how "legitimate" save bank games should be recorded or played. I believe we need to somehow make the multiplayer experience the same as the single player experience. I think it’s wrong how Element TD records stats for illegitimate games. Our fruit kills are based on illegitimacy. I believe we need to rework Standard mode so the multiplayer experience can be as legitimate as single player. If you still don’t know what I’m talking about when I speak about legitimacy and the differences in multiplayer and single player, in single player, you have no opponents to stall creep waves to income farm better. Everything is done by yourself, creating the most legitimate environment for competitions. In Multiplayer Standard mode, opponents are able to play a factoring role on how well you can do by stalling creeps allowing you to income farm better. Relying on your opponents to income farm is not the proper way of playing legitimate games. In Starcraft II, things have changed. Multiplayer needs to be as balanced as single player, especially now that there are save banks.

We could just have them download a notepad file which reads "You must download this map via Battle.net 2.0 on Starcraft II. Thank you for your cooperation."

That's interesting... that may explain why my experiences with the new Poison Tower weren't so great. I'll have to watch out for that when I use them again.

I think it'd be nice to have the builder's movement speed buffed for easier difficulties to help newer players "micro" their worker better. I think we need to encourage players to take full advantage of the speed buff to get them more active in the game instead of sitting there with their defense, too afraid to do anything. With this change, new players will be able to become active with their defense rather than sitting around doing nothing. For the first 20 or so levels, players will be able to build, sell, re-build and catch leaks more easily. I believe this change will help new players familiarize themselves with fundamental Element TD gameplay. The buffed speed on easier difficulty will allow players to resell with confidence, allowing them to catch up to the creep wave and stopping them with a new set of towers. Of course for those who already know about this skill, they can either take full advantage of it, or disable it to help them practice for harder difficulties. The speed buff can be distributed like the new income rate: VE/E, N, H/VH with H/VH staying at the current ms. What do you guys think about this idea? It helps newer players earn their interest properly.

That's exactly why I played it! I was playing games with a friend on Mumble until 7am without sleep and I had to play something requiring no micro. We played a game of Squadron TD admiring the polished look, and asking the players if they were having fun or not.

So I just played a game of Squadron TD with a friend, and I noticed how polished the game looked. I especially couldn't keep my eye off their leaderboard. If you haven't played a game of Squadron TD, see for yourself. Their leaderboard is sexy looking, and it has a lot of information, especially a lot of bank stats. I think Element TD needs a leaderboard like that to display more information about our bank files. The leaderboard in Squadron TD had different tabs which was really cool, and a really neat background too!

Host vote now counts for around 33% of players. Because of the new changes, I've been content playing in Standard to check everything out. For those who wanted the change, are you guys able to host with your desired modes? At least now, if you have a small group of friends, you can control the modes and find some potentially good players to play with. Getting people to choose Competitive or something maybe be easy now, but I dunno about making them same random.

Yeah, it's awesome! It could use a better projectile though; also I don't know if it was like this before since I never used the Flood/Drowning tower, but whenever you select the tower(s), the green circle around the tower which indicates that you've selected it isn't visible.

v0.82 Just so you guys know, it didn't get a major re-work like the Flooding/Drowning Tower, just damage modification and etc. Before its change I heard a lot of people complaining about the tower; frankly, I liked it the way it was before. One of my main builds utilized the tier 3 Poison Tower with Comet, and I was able to mass the whole map with it depending on how slow my opponents were. I believe I got like 666 points with the build. Currently, I feel it got weaker. I'm no longer able to do that build anymore due to the new change to the tower. Back then it was very compatible with the Hail/Comet tower; though I don't play random anymore, I don't know how well it'd fair with the other towers, so perhaps the change to the tower made it more practical to get in randoms. So far with my experiences with the Poison Tower, I feel it got weaker, especially on the Fruit level. If I remember correctly, I massed quite a bit. I filled the 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 positions, and it just massaged the fruit. I got like maybe 10 fruit kills (something pretty low), it was horrible. Anyways, what do you guys think?

Ah nice. The main reason why I was confused with this tower was because of it's poor performance It really does feel weak. I hope it gets a major buff next version.

Light and Darkness towers are single target towers, sure they work on illusion creeps, but not as well as there's a chance they will waste a shot. The trade-off for any AOE is that they will lose DPS on a single target for a wider range of attack (AOE), which is why some towers aren't good against bosses. What I like to do with bosses is make the elemental ray tower.

v0.82 So I just finished a game with the Drowning Tower, and it's amazing! I forgot when Chiquihuite said it, but I'm certain he said it somewhere that the reworked Drowning Tower would be one of the best triples out there, and he's right! It's very powerful, flexible, and good against any wave but darkness (seriously)! Pair this tower up with the Well Tower and you get yourself pretty far in the Fruit hunt! I managed to beat my Atom Tower build with this new Drowning Tower build on the current version with 510 points! I think my Atom Tower build got like 466 points. I'm pretty in love with the new tower! Good job! Oh and for those who don't know what this tower does, I'll explain it here: The tower has an ability called Pressure. Essentially, the ability has the tower trade attack speed for AOE. The bigger AOE you give it, the slower the attack and vice versa. It has 4 levels: First level will have the tower at 0.31 atk speed with 0 splash. Second level will have the tower at 0.66 speed with 1.5/3 splash. Third level will have the tower at 1 atk speed with 2.25/4.5 splash. Fourth level will have the tower at 1.5 atk speed with 3/6 splash. And like the Intensify Tower, there's an option to toggle between the different levels of Pressure. The Flooding Tower has an attack of 363, and the Drowning Tower has an attack of 1815.

v0.82 I don't know much about the mechanics of this tower. It seems a bit different than the WC3 version. This tower seems to randomly hit creeps with lightning from the orbs. I thought the orbs orbiting around the tower would do dps damage or something when it comes into close contact with the creep. If someone could please explain the tower, since there's really not much information about it anywhere, that'd really help. Another thing about this tower is that I don't think it's very powerful. It could be that I'm not using it properly, but the damage output is really bad. I would still leak water creeps with it's tier 2 version. I wasn't able to manage my resources well with this tower because the damage for cost was really bad, causing me to build more towers to compensate for it's bad damage. I put these towers on the 7 and 5 single pass positions, treating them like the Vapor/Nova/AOE towers and they aren't very reliable. I think the tower needs a bit more tweaking. Cosmetics wise, it looks awesome! Please share your thoughts, or shed some light on this tower. Oh and just for people who haven't seen this tower yet, here's a screen shot of it!

A private beta version to test it out in a PvE? I like the idea of trying it out first with a PvE concept to see how the mode would fair.

Earth, Fire, and Water aren't supposed to be great against bosses. Use them for creep waves that are weak against splash such as normal, undead and illusions.

It should be 2.25 at Normal with additional interest. It is 1.5 * 1.5, not 1.5 + 1.5. Speaking of that, you might wanna change the game's F12 Info about base interest rate being at 2% which can be increased to 3% part. Another thing! -ma should only show to the person doing the command, and not to all. Also, since the game is now using saves, it would be nice to inform players that after they've been defeated, their points have been saved. Anyways, the new save system is really cool, it's just a shame I play two different computers

Couple days ago actually I tried a Mildew Build, and the projectiles kept malfunctioning. Instead of the projectile returning back to the tower, it just extends even further out.

There's not much info on how the new Orbit Tower works, not in the game or on the site. Other than that it looks really cool. Can't wait to try out other new changes!

Hey Kara the Orbit tower is sick, though I found a bug. Whenever you attempt to select your Ray Towers by double clicking them, the Orbit Towers also gets selected; it's a pain in the ass because I have to deselect the Orbit Tower out in order for me to upgrade and all.

Wait, so your idea is to have towers have HP and you can damage/heal/kill them? How much HP would towers normally have? Couldn't you just resell damaged towers and remake them, or is the resell value now based on the % of HP a tower has? Also couldn't players just team up against someone, essentially giving them hell? If people do that, it can be pretty unfair and can ruin the experience for some players.

I just feel that once you opponent(s) rush their tier 2 triple tower or tier 3 dual tower, there's not much a random player can do.

So I played my first competitive game since version 0.81; though it was all pick normal, it was still fun competing against players. I was just wondering about your thoughts about using the -random command in an all pick competitive mode, as one guy did it in my game. Is this even intentional? Other than the obvious 100% resell value of towers, it's a humungous disadvantage in competitive mode all pick. I also doubt you'd be able to take advantage of the 100% resell on elemental towers as you have no time to quickly sell and rebuild against AP builds. Other than handicapping yourself, why is it available in this mode?

How often did this occur for you? What level did this happen on? Do you think you can explain the elements you chose before the bug happened? Specifically what colour were you when this happened? Or have you already tested the bug on all spots? Also if you've already tested the bug on all positions, can you tell us how you would reproduce the bug? Also just to make sure, did you have gas saved up and wanted to spawn multiple elements at the same time? If that's the case, you can only spawn one element at a time. Any more detail would also be nice.

The person beside me built their Mildew Tower close to my side, and whenever it attacks towards my direction (to the left), the projectile would extend even further into my defense. I've attached a Screen Shot.

It's better than host having no power. I'm all for it.